I miss the Oilers. A lot. During my formative years, it was the annual Saints/Oilers preseason game that, for me, signified the official return of football season. The Oilers game made it real.

Even better, there was always a pretty decent chance the Saints would actually win the damn thing. At the time, it didn’t matter to me just how inconsequential pulling out a preseason win on a Guido Merkens pass to Toussaint L’Overture Tyler with 3 minutes left was. Screw that, Saints win baby! I enjoyed Saints/Oilers preseason games to the point where I actually started liking the Oilers in general. There were so many links between the two franchises. Bum. Earl. Archie. Krazy George. Haywood Jeffires, bitches!

These days? Not so much. Houston’s NFL franchise is now known as the Houstonians. Or the Shelbyvillians. Or something. All that’s left of the Oilers is Earl’s hot smoked sausage and Bum’s smokin’ hot granddaughter. Not that I don’t enjoy each of them, because I do. Wouldn’t mind having a little of both in my mouth right this minute. (Not either, both.)

For some reason, Krazy George has spent the better part of the last decade vehemently defending his claim to having invented quite possibly the single most heinous stadium ritual of our lifetimes, The Wave™. Why is anyone’s guess, I’m pretty sure most everyone just assumes it was invented by Satan. Damn, George. And I thought the Shoe Town commercials were "rock bottom."

As for preseason, we’ve all long since grown up and come to the Santa Claus-esque realization that the score doesn’t matter in a preseason game. But over the last several years, it’s gone even beyond that. It’s to the point where virtually nothing in a preseason game matters anymore. Nothing except injury, that is.

So yeah, it sucks. I had planned on writing up a post over the weekend with postgame thoughts on the Saints/Cardinals game, but then I thought to myself: "Why?" I’m sure you’ve all read 500 Message Board Guy missives on what we saw Thursday night, ranging from the ridiculously shallow and reactionary "OMG fire Barry Gibb’s his defense still suck!" to the excruciatingly tedious blow-by-blow accounts of what a great job Reggie Bush did on the sideline while Tyler Palko was throwing that 4th quarter pass in the general direction of Buck Ortega. See, you can’t underestimate Reggie’s value to the team in situations like that. That kind of greatness doesn’t show up on the stat sheet. (Personally, I thought Reggie looked like he was jonesing for a slice of deep dish served from the hood of a good friend’s Italian car at that moment. But I certainly appreciate the relevant, unbiased and agenda-free observations.)

But at the end of the day, none of it means jack squat.

• Meachem looked GREAT!!! — A) Against a backup safety, and B) with the benefit of about ten missed tackles
• Adrian Arrington! — Against practice squad guys
• The defense looked just like last year — Half the defense was out, and they didn’t gameplan
• They still can’t run the ball — Vanilla offense, it’s preseason
• Payton still passes too much — Payton was looking at Brunell and the WRs, it’s preseason

So what’s the point? "It’s preseason" legitimately trumps pretty much any and all preseason observations we fans might make. Any attempt to find meaning in it amounts to little more than mental masturbation. And screw that. If I’m gonna masturbate, by golly it’s gonna be physical.

On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that…

• Robert Meachem is better than Jerry Rice
• Adrian Arrington’s turf toe is going to magically transform into a natural grass toe any minute now and he’s going to be Colston II: 7th Round Boogaloo
• Will Smith and Charles Grant will combine for zero sacks this year
• The Saints really need to find out asap whether or not Waylon Prather and/or Ronnie Ghent can play corner
• Remember back in ‘86 when the Saints drafted Dalton Hilliard, Rueben Mayes, Barry Word and Gil Fenerty all in one draft? Yeah, welcome to April 2009. (Oh and Mickey, if you want to throw a Pat Swilling in there too while you’re at it, that’d be great.)

Oh, settle down. I’m just playing (except for the Waylon Prather to cornerback idea, which is fuckin’ brilliant.) But boy is it gonna be BIG BIG BIG HUGE HONKIN’ FUN next February when The Great Stick-With-Reggie vs. Draft-Keiland Message Board Debates begin. Let’s just pause for a second and give that one a little time to sink in. Oh, I’ve seen the future, man. It’s bubbly. Now, get that bottle of Drano away from your mouth before you hurt yourself. Hell, I’ve got half a mind to get that ball rolling just as soon as I finish this post.

Meantime, there’s another bout of pushing and shoving from which we fans can derive little to no meaning this Saturday night against the Not-Oilers. Being an out-of-towner, I will not be able to view the game live Saturday night. I know because I’ve started 150 message board threads to ask for tips on how to get around the inconvenience of my geographical location, and no solutions have been forthcoming. Lousy message boards. What good are they if they can’t completely free me from the bounds of time and space? Huh? Huh???

Instead, I’ll be listening to the game as it happens (legally) via NFL.com and RealNetworks, while eagerly awaiting the annual opportunity to call Real to cancel after the last preseason game. That’s always big fun, what with the barely comprehensible customer service rep asking me 40 times whether I really, really, really want to deprive myself of the additional entertainment goodness offered by RealNetworks year round. And then with me asking about 10 times for confirmation that I’m 100% completely cancelled, without any other free trials that I’ll have to call again to cancel, and with those responses being met with more barely comprehensible sales pitch. I’m really glad that RealNetworks is more than happy to get you set up online, but somehow doesn’t have the technology to let you cancel online. Otherwise I’d miss out on all that fun.

Won’t be able to actually watch the game until NFL Network replays it Monday morning. Which sucks, because my boys and I were looking forward to a Sunday viewing. But what are you gonna do? The answer, of course, is to start a thread on a message board to bitch about the lack of RESPECK!!!!™ NFL Network is showing the Saints by their inability to edit the game into a tidy little exactly three hour package for rebroadcast within 12 or so hours. I mean, really, don’t their editing crews work 24 hours? And what do you mean they have something like 14 or 15 other games they need to rebroadcast too, and they can only air 6 or 7 per 24 hour day? No way man, the only logical conclusion is that they HATE THE SAINTS!!! Grrrr! My head is about to explode because, against all odds, I haven’t actually seen one of those posts yet on this particular issue. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time though, being as it seems the majority of the message board population waits until about an hour before gametime to establish their means of observation, and then panics should the means not be readily apparent within about 10 seconds.

So with all that in mind, this ain’t gonna be much of a "Viewer Guide" as the post title would indicate. False advertizing?
Possibly, if we took ourselves the least bit seriously here at moosedenied. But we don’t, so what are you gonna do about it? Sorry, the Houstonians simply don’t interest me in the least. No LSU boys, no former Saints, no Bum, no Earl. No nothing. Steve Slaton’s always fun to watch. But that’s about it. So here’s me half-assing it the rest of the way…

• Can Meechum™ come correct for a second consecutive game?
• Can Goodwin handle Amobe Okoye?
• Can the Saints’ defensive backfield cover somebody? Anybody? Please?
• Can Reggie put up 30 yards on the ground?

Any chance we could just fast forward the rest of the preseason? And bring back the Oilers?